Astrology on Wall Street

You probably thought that the guys on Wall Street¹ who manage money for investment banks are not only well paid, but smart, hard-headed financial types who don't have any patience for kooky theories. That's probably true of most of them. They are, after all, masters of the universe.

But at least 2000 of them subscribe to a newsletter written by Arch Crawford, a financial astrologer.

Crawford warns his 2,000 subscribers particularly against the dangers of Mercury in retrograde, a time when the planet appears to be going in reverse across the sky. The phenomenon, which happens three times or more a year, indicates a month when communications will be screwed up. He warns his subscribers never to start anything new during that time. He points to the fact that Knight Capital launched a new software program in August, when Mercury was in retrograde, and the brokerage firm nearly went out of business. He also notes that most major market glitches have happened while Mercury was in retrograde. (source)

According to Karen Starich, another financial astrologer,

Neptune represents money. But when Saturn shows up in a chart, it indicates restriction. So for the Fed, that means the "fiscal cliff is here, and there's no place to go except to print more money or unravel these financial institutions," Starich says.

Listen, I don't expect the financial wizards on Wall Street to know about Higgs boson or small nuclear RNA, but I would expect them to know the difference between knowledge and fantasy. There's a good chance we'll fall off the fiscal cliff and have to deal with sequestration, but it doesn't have anything to do with Saturn showing up in a chart.

It's frightening to think that a lot of guys who are responsible for managing a lot of money listen to this...² They must be pretty smart guys, at least pretty good with numbers. If they weren't they wouldn't keep their jobs. How is it that such pretty smart guys can know so little about the world? Where did their education go wrong?